5 ms·

Daly City is 9.7 miles from the reddit office, for all practical purposes it sounds like Yishan wanted to just move offices in the same city; the Daly City part

by anon808 12y ago

Daly City is 9.7 miles from the reddit office, for all practical purposes it sounds like Yishan wanted to just move offices in the same city; the Daly City part doesn't seem like it's important. Or am I missing something?

karissa 12y ago
with a highly competitive job market, especially where many of the people in a city with poor public transit do not have cars, 9.7 miles is annoying enough to cause people to choose somewhere else to work.
- pchristensen 12y ago
  When I lived in the East Bay, it would be really hard to accept a move to Daly City (from downtown SF), because it's another 20 min each way. And East Bay BART riders wouldn't even have to change trains! For CalTrain riders, it's a doubling of the commute or more.
- jarek 12y ago
  Maybe a part of the solution to the highly competitive job market could have been not annoying your current employees by forcing them to move to a city with poor public transit? Was that board's decision, or Wong's?
SamReidHughes 12y ago
9.7 in San Francisco miles is a long commute.
- jchendy 12y ago
  I've never lived/worked in SF, but I had pretty much the same thought. Living in NYC, 9.7 miles is an almost unfathomable distance.
  - bradleyjg 12y ago
    When Citibank built the tower in LIC, I'm sure there were people that weren't happy, but I doubt they lost many employees. That's about 7 miles driving distance from wall street.
- jarek 12y ago
  Also strongly depends if "Daly City" was "Daly City three minutes walk from BART" or "Daly City in an office park by a freeway somewhere"
  - thrownaway2424 12y ago
    Which is practically all of Daly City.
strlen 12y ago
I think the conflict is more cultural than people realize: an office in Daly City is tremendously easier to reach and if you're coming from South Bay -- essentially you exit the freeway and park. On the other hand, getting to a point in SF from the freeway and parking usually takes at least 30 minutes (in addition to the 30+50 minute drive from the starting point in the South Bay or Peninsula). SOMA area is reachable by Caltrain, but Caltrain is unreliable, doesn't run as frequently nor is SOMA the only place where people have offices (and walking to further reaches of SOMA, or the area of Market, or FiDi is an often dangerous - especially at night - 20-30 minute walk). Daly City is reachable from SF by BART, but that supposes you live near a BART station in SF and the Daly City office itself is close either the Daly City or Colma BART station. In general I'd say it's easier for an SF resident to get to certain parts of Daly City (those accessible by part or by San Mateo county buses running from SF are easy if you live near BART) than it is from someone in South Bay to get to SF. Driving is very easy if you live near 280/35/19th Avenue -- getting to Daly City from Mission especially is not particularly difficult). That brings the cultural issue: different people prefer to live in SF vs. South Bay or Peninsula (some live in one place whereas they'd prefer to live elsewhere, of course). To hugely (but completely meaninglessly) over-generalize you can imagine the Peninsula as the OSI stack: physical and network layers are further south, middle-ware is in the Peninsula (Oracle in Redwood City), and presentation (end-user applications like AirBnb) are in SF (again, this is only loosely so: there are web app startups in South Bay and there are systems and middle-ware companies in SF). Intuitively it makes sense: I can't imagine starting a Foursquare in San Jose (there isn't a critical mass of people -- not all of them geeks -- cloistered around any given landmark to gain sufficient traction). In many types of companies, you want both: which is why companies always seek to locate in either transit accessible parts of South Bay/Peninsula (Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Mateo downtown areas), run buses, locate in SoMa, or have multiple offices (this sounds like a "no-go" for Reddit, but Square, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, and my own employer -- Cloudera -- all do this). Yet, if a company has a very strong SF-oriented identity (at least for its Bay Area office), a compromise location (especially if the compromise isn't just an SF office near 4th and King) could definitely upsetting existing employees who might also feel that they are no longer as valid as potential new employee the company wants to hire from South Bay.
- 12y ago
Eric_WVGG 12y ago
San Francisco attracts startups and talent because it's a cool, fun, sexy place to live. Bright young talent demands those sorts of conditions. Daly City is a suburban hellhole. If “cities” like Daly were desirable places to live, Provo, Utah and Tacoma, WA would be IT meccas. The traffic in that region guarantees an ungodly commute by car for anyone who wanted to stay in SF and drive to Daly for work (1 hour commute = $40k in pay worth in happiness http://www.npr.org/2011/10/19/141514467/small-changes-can-help-you-thrive-happily http://www.npr.org/2011/10/19/141514467/small-changes-can-he...). The public transportation is… lacking. I can’t speak for Yishan’s motivations, but if I were on the board, I would push for his replacement simply due to the talent attrition that would inevitably occur if he got his way.
- legohead 12y ago
  SF cool, fun, sexy? Have you ever been there? I found it dirty, scary, and smelly.
  - ghaff 12y ago
    Well, it's a city a lot of people like but certainly those adjectives could be applied to just about any good-size city--and it's why a lot of people also don't really like cities period. I'd add that, if your experience with SF is going to a show at the Moscone or elsewhere nearby, that general area (Market, Tenderloin, etc.) is definitely less nice than much of the rest of the city. But it's also fair that SF, for a variety of reasons, also has more street people of various sorts than most cities do.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - Eric_WVGG 12y ago
    Honestly I loathe the place. Not for any of the reasons you just listed. (“scary”? SF??)
    - hugs 12y ago
      I was born in New York City, grew up in L.A., started a company in SF, and live in Chicago, but the only place I've ever been held up at gunpoint was in San Francisco at 4th and Mission.
jacquesm 12y ago
Sounds like a nice bike commute. Especially with the weather there.
- clavalle 12y ago
  There's nothing like biking 10 miles in the cold fog along a freeway...
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    You have a really interesting definition of cold. Apparently it is "you might have to wear a jacket".
    - freshhawk 12y ago
      The standard California definition.
      - DannyBee 12y ago
        I saw someone wearing earmuffs in 55 degree weather in downtown mountain view.
- x0x0 12y ago
  you haven't met the drivers out here. They're bad, there mostly aren't physically separate bike lanes, and you often don't even get a ticket for killing a bicyclist. It's not worth it. edit: Also -- sample size of 13 -- 70+% of the people I know who bike commute daily have been hospitalized. I also know someone who did 6 months in a nursing home after some bitch ran a red light, hit him, and cracked his pelvis; he won multiple surgeries and the inability to stand up for months.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    That's a good point. I'm too NL centric here, old ladies here would have no problem with a bike trip on that distance but not having bike lanes changes the picture quite a bit, especially if the drivers do not exercise care. My mom routinely does 100 km trips and she's in her seventies.

by anon808 12y ago

karissa 12y ago

with a highly competitive job market, especially where many of the people in a city with poor public transit do not have cars, 9.7 miles is annoying enough to cause people to choose somewhere else to work.

pchristensen 12y ago
When I lived in the East Bay, it would be really hard to accept a move to Daly City (from downtown SF), because it's another 20 min each way. And East Bay BART riders wouldn't even have to change trains! For CalTrain riders, it's a doubling of the commute or more.
jarek 12y ago
Maybe a part of the solution to the highly competitive job market could have been not annoying your current employees by forcing them to move to a city with poor public transit? Was that board's decision, or Wong's?

SamReidHughes 12y ago

9.7 in San Francisco miles is a long commute.

jchendy 12y ago
I've never lived/worked in SF, but I had pretty much the same thought. Living in NYC, 9.7 miles is an almost unfathomable distance.
- bradleyjg 12y ago
  When Citibank built the tower in LIC, I'm sure there were people that weren't happy, but I doubt they lost many employees. That's about 7 miles driving distance from wall street.
jarek 12y ago
Also strongly depends if "Daly City" was "Daly City three minutes walk from BART" or "Daly City in an office park by a freeway somewhere"
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Which is practically all of Daly City.

strlen 12y ago

I think the conflict is more cultural than people realize: an office in Daly City is tremendously easier to reach and if you're coming from South Bay -- essentially you exit the freeway and park. On the other hand, getting to a point in SF from the freeway and parking usually takes at least 30 minutes (in addition to the 30+50 minute drive from the starting point in the South Bay or Peninsula). SOMA area is reachable by Caltrain, but Caltrain is unreliable, doesn't run as frequently nor is SOMA the only place where people have offices (and walking to further reaches of SOMA, or the area of Market, or FiDi is an often dangerous - especially at night - 20-30 minute walk). Daly City is reachable from SF by BART, but that supposes you live near a BART station in SF and the Daly City office itself is close either the Daly City or Colma BART station. In general I'd say it's easier for an SF resident to get to certain parts of Daly City (those accessible by part or by San Mateo county buses running from SF are easy if you live near BART) than it is from someone in South Bay to get to SF. Driving is very easy if you live near 280/35/19th Avenue -- getting to Daly City from Mission especially is not particularly difficult). That brings the cultural issue: different people prefer to live in SF vs. South Bay or Peninsula (some live in one place whereas they'd prefer to live elsewhere, of course). To hugely (but completely meaninglessly) over-generalize you can imagine the Peninsula as the OSI stack: physical and network layers are further south, middle-ware is in the Peninsula (Oracle in Redwood City), and presentation (end-user applications like AirBnb) are in SF (again, this is only loosely so: there are web app startups in South Bay and there are systems and middle-ware companies in SF). Intuitively it makes sense: I can't imagine starting a Foursquare in San Jose (there isn't a critical mass of people -- not all of them geeks -- cloistered around any given landmark to gain sufficient traction). In many types of companies, you want both: which is why companies always seek to locate in either transit accessible parts of South Bay/Peninsula (Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Mateo downtown areas), run buses, locate in SoMa, or have multiple offices (this sounds like a "no-go" for Reddit, but Square, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, and my own employer -- Cloudera -- all do this). Yet, if a company has a very strong SF-oriented identity (at least for its Bay Area office), a compromise location (especially if the compromise isn't just an SF office near 4th and King) could definitely upsetting existing employees who might also feel that they are no longer as valid as potential new employee the company wants to hire from South Bay.

12y ago

Eric_WVGG 12y ago

San Francisco attracts startups and talent because it's a cool, fun, sexy place to live. Bright young talent demands those sorts of conditions. Daly City is a suburban hellhole. If “cities” like Daly were desirable places to live, Provo, Utah and Tacoma, WA would be IT meccas. The traffic in that region guarantees an ungodly commute by car for anyone who wanted to stay in SF and drive to Daly for work (1 hour commute = $40k in pay worth in happiness http://www.npr.org/2011/10/19/141514467/small-changes-can-help-you-thrive-happily http://www.npr.org/2011/10/19/141514467/small-changes-can-he...). The public transportation is… lacking. I can’t speak for Yishan’s motivations, but if I were on the board, I would push for his replacement simply due to the talent attrition that would inevitably occur if he got his way.

legohead 12y ago
SF cool, fun, sexy? Have you ever been there? I found it dirty, scary, and smelly.
- ghaff 12y ago
  Well, it's a city a lot of people like but certainly those adjectives could be applied to just about any good-size city--and it's why a lot of people also don't really like cities period. I'd add that, if your experience with SF is going to a show at the Moscone or elsewhere nearby, that general area (Market, Tenderloin, etc.) is definitely less nice than much of the rest of the city. But it's also fair that SF, for a variety of reasons, also has more street people of various sorts than most cities do.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Eric_WVGG 12y ago
  Honestly I loathe the place. Not for any of the reasons you just listed. (“scary”? SF??)
  - hugs 12y ago
    I was born in New York City, grew up in L.A., started a company in SF, and live in Chicago, but the only place I've ever been held up at gunpoint was in San Francisco at 4th and Mission.

jacquesm 12y ago

Sounds like a nice bike commute. Especially with the weather there.

clavalle 12y ago
There's nothing like biking 10 miles in the cold fog along a freeway...
- DannyBee 12y ago
  You have a really interesting definition of cold. Apparently it is "you might have to wear a jacket".
  - freshhawk 12y ago
    The standard California definition.
    - DannyBee 12y ago
      I saw someone wearing earmuffs in 55 degree weather in downtown mountain view.
x0x0 12y ago
you haven't met the drivers out here. They're bad, there mostly aren't physically separate bike lanes, and you often don't even get a ticket for killing a bicyclist. It's not worth it. edit: Also -- sample size of 13 -- 70+% of the people I know who bike commute daily have been hospitalized. I also know someone who did 6 months in a nursing home after some bitch ran a red light, hit him, and cracked his pelvis; he won multiple surgeries and the inability to stand up for months.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  That's a good point. I'm too NL centric here, old ladies here would have no problem with a bike trip on that distance but not having bike lanes changes the picture quite a bit, especially if the drivers do not exercise care. My mom routinely does 100 km trips and she's in her seventies.